fighting games
Latest
'Street Fighter 6' gets the vibe right
Street Fighter 6 is everything Street Fighter fans want in a fighting game.
Evo Online event stretches across July with four open tournaments
The Evo fighting game tournament is back on. However, instead of pulling fans to Las Vegas, it will happen online and include four open tournaments for gamers to compete in throughout the month of July.
Evo founder confirms Riot is working on a new fighting game
Riot Games is working on a new fighting game that it hopes will appeal to a wide audience. Tom Cannon, the founder of the Evolution Championship Series who now works for Riot, confirmed the news on Friday at EVO 2019. The game will be the first all-new project for Riot since the release of League of Legends in 2009.
Lab Zero reveals driver to make PS3 fight sticks work with PS4
Shelling out for a comfortable fight stick makes sense if you're going to pour months or years into a fighting game, but updating with each console generation can get pricey. Thankfully, Skullgirls Encore developer Lab Zero Games is collaborating with Naughty Dog's John "Cowboy" Bellomy on an upcoming driver that will make some PS3 fight sticks compatible with PS4 titles, as reported by Polygon. Lab Zero CEO Peter Bartholow told Polygon that "any stick that reads as a generic USB gamepad or joystick will work," explaining that this covers MadCatz TEs and "other smaller brands and custom options such as the GodLike Controls' Cthulhu boards." The driver is not officially supported by Sony, but Lab Zero will allow other developers to use and adapt it for their own titles, so long as they share their work with Lab Zero. Bartholow explained that the team "thinks it's better for the consumer and the industry" for money to go toward new games instead of replacing fight sticks every console generation. Lab Zero intends to have PS3 fight stick compatibility present when it launches Skullgirls Encore on PS4 and Vita in 2015, but in the mean time, you can see it in development-kit action in a demonstration video after the break. [Image: Lab Zero Games]
Project EF-12 is a free, fully customizable 3D fighting game engine
Tucked away inside of the densely-packed Tokyo Game Show Indie Game Area was Project EF-12, which at first glance appeared to be a prototype 3D fighter along the lines of SoulCalibur or Tekken. After being introduced to designer/Quad Arrow CEO Masahiro Onoguchi, however, I learned that the game is in fact a free, totally customizable 3D fighting game engine. Through modifying what essentially amounts to a collection of spreadsheets, users can change virtually everything about Project EF-12, from its characters, to their abilities and stages, all the way down to the appearance of the UI. The version I played had a selection of characters that had been modified into familiar archetypes: Virtua Fighter-esque, Tekken-like – there was even a character that played with 2D-style controls, despite this being a 3D engine. Players can also insert new character models they've built from scratch, assuming the models were constructed in either Soft Image or Maya. Trading/sharing new characters is as simple as downloading a zip and extracting the spreadsheet and models into the correct folder. Project EF-12 is currently available with a mountain of Japanese-language tutorial material through Playism's Japanese website, with an English release expected on Playism's English site before the end of the year. In related news, expect Style Guide: Journalism Hyper Fighting from Joystiq Publishing almost immediately afterwards.
The top SpyParty player is a fighting game guy from EVO 2012
Four months before SpyParty debuted at EVO 2012's Indie Showcase, convention founder Seth Killian threw down a gentlemen's bet with SpyParty creator Chris Hecker: "An EVO attendee will be your No. 1 player in subsequent tests, and take down whoever the existing top players might be." Hecker took the bet. One year later, SpyParty is on its way to EVO 2013, and Hecker owes Killian a beer. SpyParty is slow-paced for a one-on-one "fighting game," but it requires the same mad obsession with detail prevalent in many fighting games. Players are either the spy or the sniper: As the spy they must blend in with a room of AI characters attending a fancy party and complete tasks unbeknownst to the sniper. The sniper has to spot the human character with enough certainty to shoot it before the other player completes all the tasks. The top SpyParty player in the world is Korey Mueller, AKA "kcmmmmm" (pictured above, standing in the blue button-down), and as a lifelong fighting game fan, it's fitting that he first heard about SpyParty at EVO 2012. Since the convention, Mueller has played 6,436 games of SpyParty and has spent 262 hours in-game, with 1,020 hours total log-in time. The player that comes closest to these numbers clocks in at 5,151 games and 213 hours in-game. After picking out which beer he's going to buy Killian, Hecker asked Mueller about his fighting game roots and how he thinks SpyParty fits into the fighting game community. "There's always this feeling that there's some way I can improve, and every time I meet a personal goal, I find another one," Mueller tells Hecker. "I couldn't really look at the game and decide to be a top player, I just wanted to continue to improve – and at some point, I guess I got pretty decent at it. Now that you mention it, 6,000 games is a lot." Yeah, it is.
BlazBlue producer wants to bring a new fighting series to PS4
Arc System Works has designs on bringing a new fighting game series to the PlayStation 4, according to Shoryuken's translation of Dengeki's interview with BlazBlue series producer Toshimichi Mori."We can't give you a definite title yet, but we want to make one," Mori said. "We actually made Guilty Gear targeting the Dreamcast, and we started creating BlazBlue around the time of the PS3 release, so we want to make a game for PS4 when the system releases. Creating new things at the turning point of time is who Arc System Works is, so we would like to take it on."If we may be so bold, Arc System Works, might we suggest a 2D fighting game based on the works of Hayao Miyazaki? Kiki vs. Yubaba, Princess Mononoke vs. Nausicaä of the Valley – just think about it.
Overheard at Comic-Con: The battle for Seth Killian
During the "Titans of Fighting Games" panel on Friday afternoon at Comic-Con 2012, PlayStation All-Stars director Omar Kendall was introduced on stage just after Street Fighter creator Yoshinori Ono left it, and he cleverly joked as Ono departed that developer SuperBot was happy to have Seth Killian on board, who of course came from Ono's team at Capcom. "If anyone else is looking for a job," poked Kendall, "you can email us."Later in the panel, Kendall remarked to fellow panelist Tekken creator Katsuhiro Harada that he was happy to have Tekken's Heihachi in PS All-Stars as a playable character, and he added that if Ono was in fact still in the room, he'd also be happy to have a character from Street Fighter included. The characteristically goofy Ono returned to appear at the Q&A mic later on, and his first question, in the middle of a laughing crowd, was to Kendall."Yes, can you give me back Seth Killian?" he asked in accented English, and the panel broke out laughing."If you give me Chun Li," Kendall joked back, "I'll give you back Seth Killian." Ono considered that a moment, and then replied, though he was barely heard by the cheering crowd: "Deal."But Harada, who was on the panel to also talk about Tekken Tag Tournament 2, was having none of it. "Ono, go home," he also said in English. "We don't have time for this."
Divekick, a fighting game parody of fighting games, hits Kickstarter
Divekick started out as a joke. It was meant to be a commentary on fighting games and the community surrounding it, but has escalated into much more since people discovered it was ... actually fun.Now creator Adam "Keits" Heart is holding a Kickstarter campaign to finance a PC release. Divekick only uses two buttons: jump and kick. The first hit scored wins the round, and the first to win five rounds takes the match. A Kick-Meter fills during the match and activates Kick-Factor, speeding up your diving and kicks.Divekick has 28 days to go at the time of publishing, and has earned $9000 toward its $30,000 goal.
Yoshinori Ono on resurrecting Street Fighter, says 'there's no mercy' at Capcom
Yoshinori Ono is more than the Blanka-toting, smiling face of the Street Fighter series – he's its savior. After Street Fighter III: Third Strike in 1999, Capcom was all too happy to abandon the series, which had seen flagging sales. And Ono always felt responsible for having some hand in its demise, having worked on the last game in the series.He held onto that guilt for years, and after being promoted to the role of producer, pitched a design document for Street Fighter IV. "I was working on Onimusha 4 and during that time I repeatedly submitted my proposal for a new Street Fighter," he told Eurogamer. "The company kept telling me: 'It's a dead franchise. It doesn't make any money. We have series that make money like Resident Evil and Onimusha. Why bother with a dead franchise?'""Eventually I was given a small budget to create a prototype," Ono revealed. But it wasn't a result of his "pestering" the management that eventually brought the game to fruition – the journalists and fans "started making a lot of noise and pressuring Capcom," even though Ono admitted he told them to do that. "Journalists and fans have the power to move Capcom - not producers. With so many voices crying out for a Street Fighter game Capcom could no longer ignore it any more and so they gave the green light for a prototype and they asked me to create it. It's a miracle that happened after a decade..."But as romantic as all of this is, Ono's account of work-life at Capcom is anything but. After taking a step back from the Street Fighter spotlight following a health scare, Ono spoke candidly about his employer – one he accuses of overworking him and failing to recognize his health woes related to overworking."Nobody told me to take a rest. When I returned to work, Capcom didn't even acknowledge that I had been in hospital. There was no change in my schedule. I was at home for an entire week before the doctors allowed me to return to work. When I returned to my desk there was a ticket to Rome waiting for me. There's no mercy. Everyone in the company says: 'Ono-san we've been so worried about you.' Then they hand me a timetable and it's completely filled with things to do."Ono recalled a previous project in his first days at Capcom, when he had a short timetable to retrofit the soundtrack for Street Fighter Alpha to be compatible with a less advanced arcade chipset. "Capcom was very good at squeezing people to the last drop of their blood to get work done."In regards to what's next, Ono isn't talking – but there's no way he'll leave fighting games behind. "There have been rumours saying Ono is dead or retiring. None of that's true. I want to support the next generation of fighting game. It's my job. It's my calling."
3 windwalker monk abilities that channel classic fighting games
One of the key themes being presented with the new monk class is arcade brawlers, and the new windwalker specialization delivers this in spades. I spent my youth getting rocked by Sagat in Street Fighter II on the SNES, and I've enjoyed the genre ever since. From my time on the beta with windwalkers, here are three abilities that immediately evoke my childhood. Sorry, brewmasters and mistweavers; these abilities are only for those of us who can kick back and knuckle up. Flying Serpent Kick Josh Myers touched on this in his earlier article on monk abilities, but remember Liu Kang's signature flying kick from Mortal Kombat? It's here, and it's every bit as awesome now as it was then. Hit Flying Serpent Kick, and your windwalker takes off at what appears to be epic mount speed, which lasts for several seconds (about 100 yards of travel). Click again and he lands, damaging and slowing anything in the area. This doesn't hit overly hard, but combined with Roll, it's amazing maneuverability around the battlefield. I used to call feral druids the fastest spec on the battlefield, but not anymore. Forget Heroic Leap; this is now my favorite ability in the game.
Skullgirls 'Move Primer' trailer primes your eventual moves
From everything we've seen before, and from the contents of this latest trailer, it looks as though Skullgirls will attempt to solve universal genre issues that plague fighting game enthusiasts the world over. That's a pretty tall order, considering that Capcom, Namco, SNK (R.I.P) and others have been attempting the same feat for nearly 25 years. Reverge Labs seems to understand that gameplay issues in fighters can't be solved by balancing alone, and as such will be implementing a number of mechanical systems in order to prevent abusive gameplay mechanics which can potentially taint a fighting experience. The Anti-Infinite Combo System, for instance, allows players to escape from combos that would otherwise guarantee a loss. Similarly, the game's blocking system protects unblockable high-low mix-up traps. Skullgirls' radically different failsafe systems have already sparked heavy debate among the die-hard fighters that run Joystiq's circles, a prevailing opinion being that the "problems" the game's systems attempt to correct are not problems at all, but rather accepted play-styles inherent to the genre. It will take months of extensive community involvement for the scene to render a verdict either way, which we can get started on sometime early next year.
Massively's tour of Mini Fighter
In my heart, I really want to like fighting games. And I do, at that, but just like we have to accept at some point that we're never going to become a rock god outside of our living room, I have to accept that I'm just not good at them. At some point my responses to what's happening on the screen fall into hopeless flailing, and I'm left watching my opponent's combo number going into scientific notation. So while on a recent developer tour of Mini Fighter, I got to see a lot of my character winding up and performing some bone-shattering attacks on a target that would have been obliterated, had they not moved approximately ten minutes ago. But it was hard to get upset by that, because the game was pretty unambiguously fun despite my inherent lack of skill. The game is currently in Open Beta, but it already has a lot of polish and a lot of neat features to make it well worth playing. Skip past the cut for the details on the game and our time with it.
Namco's iPhone division considering... Tekken?
Actually, I'd play that. Namco recently announced that they were forming an Apple Games division to head up game development for Apple platforms like the iPhone, and in this interview, a producer for them who used to work for Apple says that they're excited to work on bringing great games to the handheld device. Like, for example, Pac-man, Galaga, and... Soulcaliber and Tekken. You heard that right -- fighting games haven't exactly made a splash on the iPhone, as they're primarily a button-based genre, and the iPhone, of course, has no buttons.But that won't stop Namco's guy from putting the old head gears into motion: "It's just the controls that are a challenge. We are thinking about that." Think away, crazy man -- I'd love to pull out Yoshimitsu for a few rounds while waiting at a bus stop. Obviously, the easiest way to try and port these would be to put overlaid buttons on the screen, but that doesn't leave a lot of room for the fighting (and not having the tactile feedback would probably be a problem as well). Maybe some gesture-based accelerometer movement? Sky's the limit, right?. Your call, Namco -- can't wait to see what you come up with.[via Joystiq]
King of Fighters XII at AOU 2008
Some of you might remember our post about King of Fighters XII coming to the PS3 in 2009. That seems like a long time from now, but don't worry old school fighting fans -- 2008 won't be going down without a little SNK love. The SNK-Capcom website tells fans that the AOU 2008 expo in Tokyo's Makuhari Messe convention center will feature King of Fighters XII in video format. Not much else is know about what will be shown at AOU, but we do know that KoF XII will use a whole new game engine and rehashed old character sprites will be a thing of the past. The game is expected to come out first in the arcades by June/July 2008, running on the Taito Type X². A PS3 port (and possibly an Xbox 360 port) will follow in 2009.
Hori brings non-wacky controller to the Wii
With almost every controller accessory and attachment for the Wii seeming more hare-brained than the last, it's a relief to come across a more traditional product. The only evidence to suggest any link between Hori's Fighting Stick and the Wii, besides its white and blue colors, are the three buttons on the top right labeled with the remote's home, plus, and minus symbols. Uh, and the parts where it says "Wii."Though it isn't completely clear yet what purpose the top left switches serve, they're probably meant for turbo/slow/hold functions. Like Hori's fighting sticks for other consoles, this one employs the Japanese design favored by the hardcore -- convex buttons, ball top stick (Sanwa, likely), arced button placement, and what we assume to be a square gate. It might take some time for you to adjust to the layout if you're used to western setups. Play-Asia's $52.90 import price might sound expensive, but it's indicative of Hori's reputation as a manufacturer of relatively high-quality arcade sticks. Hopefully, the Wii will actually have some fighting games that are compatible with the stick by the time its November release in Japan comes around. Check past the post break for a larger image.
New Dragon Ball Z game announced
It looks like our previous story about a new DBZ game on the way was right. IGN is reporting that Dragon Ball Z fans can look forward to another installment in the Shin Budokai series. Atari's Dragon Ball Z Shin Budokai: Another Road will add more than 50 new fighting skill and ultimate attacks, a new storyline that deals with Future Trunks and his fight agains Majin Buu. The title will have available characters from all of the Dragon Ball anime worlds. The title is due out in March. I bought the first Dragon Ball Z game on the PSP and had quite a bit of fun with it. I didn't care for the plot though, so hopefully the plot is improved in this sequel. Either way, the DBZ games remain some of the best anime fighters on the market. Are there any readers that are excited like me about Dragon Ball Z Shin Budokai: Another Road?
